Re:IBM Z mainframes revived by Red Hat, AI and security
by ralphc on Thursday August 20, 2020 @01:59PM
(#24226303)
Every time one of these articles comes along we hear about fast I/O and how other hardware can't handle the volume. Why not? What makes mainframe hardware so special that it can't be duplicated in other architectures?
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Re:IBM Z mainframes revived by Red Hat, AI and security
by temac on Thursday August 20, 2020 @05:41PM
(#24229358)
The chips are huge and numerous & you would have to boostrap a market to compete, that's hard. Technically it can be "duplicated", but in the same sense that Apple can make a state of the art processor better than Intel: you have to assemble a big first class team, a shitload of money, and persist during 10 years. If you want to compete on a similar field as mainframes you also need extreme reliability, and that's even more expensive to design. If you relax the requirements and make some quite special purpose hardware arguably it should be "easy" enough to make some fast I/O that can handle volume; but then your market will be small, niche most of the time.
Re:IBM Z mainframes revived by Red Hat, AI and security
by neverartful on Thursday August 20, 2020 @03:38PM
(#24227782)
Great questions. I've often wondered the same thing. I strongly suspect that the biggest impediment might be the threat of litigation for patent infringement. IBM has fought fiercely in the past to protect their crown jewels.